


Missing You

by shirewalker



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, nieshka takes sarkan to her cottage, right after the ending, sarkan has some Stuff to confess, they really really missed each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirewalker/pseuds/shirewalker
Summary: For 2017 Uprooted Week. For the prompts "Cohabitation" and "Home" (respectively days 5 and 7)Sarkan really isn't a fan of the Wood, but for Nieshka, he'll go in it and he'll spend the night in her cottage. But there's still a tower to fix and he's new to caring for others this much. In all honesty, he had never expected to care for her this much. But he does.





	Missing You

**Author's Note:**

> not my first time writing nieshkan, but first time posting here. also, first time writing steamy times for these nerds.

 

 

 

Sunrise was now closer than sunset had ever been. Sarkan grumbled something under his breath about propriety and living in the Wood being absurd and what on earth was this creature thinking about dancing until so late in the night?

Agnieszka chuckled, fingers laced through his as she tugged him along and deeper into the Wood. The air was lighter than it had been before and it seemed to welcome them in.

“You’re completely delusional.” He muttered after they walked over a stream of water so thin it was more of a string than an actual stream. Yet, despite his muttering and foul mood, the Dragon’s grip on her hand was strong, full of longing and desire. Her heart skipped a beat every time he brushed his thumb over her knuckles.

She flashed a smile that spoke of wicked ideas, “Why? Because I live in the Wood? Or because I think I can take you to my cottage and keep you there for the rest of the night?” His glower grew deeper but he didn’t answer. Agnieszka laughed and a bird flew away overhead, “Both! Oh Sarkan…” She stopped and pulled him in for a peck on his downturned lips, “I missed you.”

His glower softened, “I missed you too… Nieshka.” He let out under his breath.

Nieshka? Oh. He’d never… “Say it again…” She whispered. No, begged. Yes, she had definitely begged.

Something sparkled in his eyes, shining through his glower, “Nieshka.” And then he took her in his arms and kissed her open mouth. The kiss was hungry and desperate, Sarkan’s lips gliding over hers between gasped breaths. He poured into her all of his longing and Agnieszka answered in kind, her hands grasping handfuls of his traveling coat. Eons passed before they finally let go of each other, their breathing uneven and raspy. Her head was spinning, from the kiss, from the confession, from his presence alone. The kiss had sated her needs for a moment, but deep in her core she knew it wasn’t enough. Just a kiss would never be enough. She needed him completely.

“My…” her voice was hoarse and she cleared her throat, “Cottage… My cottage is just ahead, Sarkan…”

“I wager it’s as impossibly filthy as your current outfit…” Sarkan muttered, his bite losing edge with his breathless voice.

A smirk grew on her lips as she uttered an incantation and soft, golden light undid the buttons of his coat, “Come home with me so we can fix my current outfit situation.”

A groan grew deep in his throat as Sarkan tried hard to keep his glower in place. When Agnieszka pressed her body flush against his, he blew out an annoyed huff, his fight for control over and lost. “Very well, you impossible creature. Show me your little… cottage.”

 

* * *

 

The impossibly filthy outfit was laid to waste on the impossibly clean floor of her little cottage as Sarkan removed layer after layer off of her. Agnieszka laughed all along, her Dragon torn between complaining about the paradox that was her home and kissing every patch of skin he kept uncovering. The cottage was clean but a mess and oh lord, her skin tasted of _honey_? Agnieszka spelled away his outfit in between kisses, her hands desperate to rub all over his hot and tanned skin. Lean muscles moved under the sun-kissed skin and she wondered just what Sarkan had been doing all these months away. Had he prettied himself up before coming back? Or had he been doing just hard work in the capital and under the sun?

An incantation left the Dragon’s hungry mouth and her fireplace was lit the very next second, its bright flames heating up the small space. He hoisted her up and walked to it, a second incantation bringing to life a rug that was lush and expensive looking. Its softness kissed her skin and Agnieszka sighed, her body coming to life in the heat of the fire and the embrace of the rug and under Sarkan’s kisses.

She looked up and found Sarkan gazing at her, his expression open and without any secrets to hold back, for the first time since they had laid eyes on each other. “Sarkan…” She breathed, taken aback by the emotions that swirled wild in his eyes. Longing, despair, desire, happiness, wonder… And something else… Something… “Sarkan…” She called him again, fingers passing through his mussed hair, her own longing winning over any rational thought and speech.

Sarkan bent down and kissed her again, her name on his lips as he peppered her skin with more and more kisses, over and over and over again. They burned her feverish skin, as if he was an actual dragon, breathing fire on her skin and deep into her bones, deep into her very being. If he carried on like this, she was certain her body would catch fire, burn bright and turn to ashes soon enough.

A gasp escaped her lips when she felt his lips between her thighs. And when she felt his tongue, a moan followed that gasp. Her eyes rolled in their sockets and she grabbed a handful of his hair. Her body shook with his laughter and she cursed his name. The nerve! To touch her like that and then laugh at the sounds she was making. Oh, she would make him pay. She would. But… later. Later. Later. Later… Oh! Agnieszka arched her back as the Dragon worked her core with a decades-practiced string of moves, that damning tip teasing and teasing her in a never-ending wordless question that had her body crying out a wordless answer and her lips gasping his name.

“Sarkan...! Sarkan…!” She cried for him moments later as he licked her clean, his fingers having carved permanent indentations on her hips. Wanting more, wanting to see him, wanting _him_ , Agnieszka pulled at his hair until their noses were touching and she could see very curve and dip of his frown. Until she could see every shade of his dark and beautiful eyes.

“You insufferable woman… Were you not taught on how to wait?” He rasped. But his tone betrayed his face and a corner of his lips began turning up. “Somehow, as impossible as it may sound… I believe that’s part of your charm. And part of why I…” He stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide open in surprise. Or was it nerves? This was a new expression and Agnieszka didn’t know how to interpret it. But she wanted to. Oh, how desperately she wanted to. Sarkan took a deep breath and reached up, tucking away a lock of hair that somehow had gotten all over her face. In the heat of the moment, Agnieszka hadn’t even noticed that. She felt a blush creep into her cheeks when Sarkan frowned at another wild lock of hair. But this time… This time he held on to it and began playing with the lock. For long seconds that stretched forever, he did nothing but absentmindedly playing with her hair. Agnieszka stared in awe at how beautiful he looked when lost in thought over a lock of hair. _Her_ lock of hair. Then, “I hated being away, Nieshka. It was unbearable to be in the capital. Surrounded by so many people… So much… disorder and…”

She chuckled, “That’s why you came back? The disorder?”

He scowled and tugged hard at her hair, earning a yelp from her still laughing lips, “You truly are impossible. I am trying to… trying to confess something important and you laugh at me.”

She stifled her laughter, “I’m sorry, Sarkan. Please… continue…”

A grunt and another tug at her hair, “I missed you.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“I missed you…” He said again, his famous glower showing up again, “I missed you so much that my incantations were coming out all wrong half of the time. I kept doing things as if… As if we were doing them together.” His words were barely a whisper now, “Alosha caught me talking to myself one morning and just laughed at me, throwing ridiculous claims over her shoulder as she left me alone with my workings.”

“What sort of claims?”

His cheeks turned a dark shade of pink, his eyes focusing in a spot next to her head. Sarkan was obviously avoiding the question.

“Sarkan?”

He grumbled, “She claimed it was happening because I…” he cleared his throat, “because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because… I’m in love with you.”

Oh. “And… was she right?” When had things gotten so quiet between them? When had his skin become so hot and tingling against her? When had her hands stopped moving? Nothing made a sound but the crackling fireplace as her whole body held a breath, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Sarkan brushed his hand over her cheek, “…Yes.”

“You… you…”

A smirk found its way to his face, “Eloquent as always.” Agnieszka rolled her eyes. “I spent the rest of that day avoiding thinking about what she’d said. And then… I realised I had spent all that time thinking of reasons to return here.” He sighed, “And that’s when I realised just how far I’d damned myself by taking you with me back to my tower, so long ago.”

“Wow. You really know how to be romantic.”

His scowl was equal parts annoyance and exasperation. Agnieszka bit back a smirk. He was trying, so she should try as well. Even if it was far too much fun to tease him and his words. Sarkan sighed again, “You are impossible, exhausting, you don’t follow any rules but your own, you’re always dirty and dishevelled somehow, you go into the Wood as if it’s a lovely and peaceful meadow, you speak whenever and however you wish to, you don’t do anything in the right order… And yet!” he went on and on, his cheeks now so red it was as if Agnieszka had reached over and painted them with paint and a brush, “And yet… I can’t stay away from you. My… My… heart… It… craves for you.” He uttered the words, the Dragon completely at a loss for words for the first time since Agnieszka had met him.

Feeling her heart swell to impossible proportions, she tightened her hold around him and pressed a kiss on his nose, earning an annoyed grunt in turn, “I love you too, Sarkan.” The words coming out so easily it was just like breathing.

She writhed under him, making his body go taunt with the tease, “Now… I really, _really_ missed you. How about we make up for lost time? You running away after everything was just… not nice.”

Sarkan scowled again, “You’re impossible.”

“So you keep saying.”

 

* * *

 

When Agnieszka woke up the next day, she felt… entirely sated. Yes. Sarkan had kept her busy throughout the rest of the night and into the early morning until the two had been too tired to even throw snappy remarks at each other. Now, relatively rested, she felt for him and found the bed empty.

Sitting up, she searched her small cottage and found the Dragon going through his travel pack and fully dressed. “Going somewhere?”

His shoulders tensed at the sound of her voice and soon all his body was straight as a ramrod. “I was going to the tower to fix it while you slept.”

“Why?”

“Because it can’t stay that way.”

“You could go later. After we’ve eaten. I could go with you and help. Why the rush?”

He remained silent. Agnieszka frowned, there was something he wasn’t saying. She could feel the unsaid words hanging in the air between them. Getting up all wrapped in her sheets, she walked to him. “What’s the matter?” She turned him her way and found worry written all over his face, “Sarkan?”

“I…” he set his jaw, “I wanted to have it presentable. Before you went there. So you could go there… Because…” A sharp breath escaped his lips, “Because I would like you to… go back to the tower… with me.”

Go back…? Why? She was about to ask if he hated her cottage that much when she saw something else in his eyes. “You’re scared. For me.”

Sarkan didn’t answer.

She smiled, “The Wood won’t hurt me, Sarkan.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t know that. It would be easier to… to make sure you’re… safe, if… if you were there. With me.”

He was stammering. Clearly this wasn’t going according to his plan. Agnieszka could see it all. He’d go to his tower, fix it as best as he could and come back before she was up. He’d say something cranky and somewhere among his words he’d propose the idea. At his pace. But she had to go and mess up his careful arranged plan, as she always did. But this time… this time he wasn’t annoyed at this hiccup in the plan.

She wrapped her arms around him and buried her nose in the crook of his neck, “Sarkan… Would you sleep better if I said yes?”

His arms were tight around her, as if he wanted to keep her forever, his face lost in the mess of her hair. “Yes.”

“Will I get to wake up with you still in bed with me?”

A groan. She smiled. Then, “Yes.”

“Always?”

Sarkan huffed, his breath hot on her skin, “You’re asking too much. You know my workings need me early in the morning.”

“You’re asking me to leave my lovely cottage, Sarkan. Compromises have to be taken.”

He huffed again, “Very well. I’ll always stay in bed until you wake up. Will you return home with me now?”

“No.”

“What? Why?” He looked back at her, confusion marring his handsome face. Agnieszka had to bite away her smile. Confused and annoyed Sarkan was always a sight to behold in her book.

“Why do you want me to go with you?”

He paused. He made to speak, but shut his mouth again. He looked around. “I…”

“I know.” She interrupted him. Time. Sarkan needed time. She knew exactly why he wanted her to be safe and, while she desperately wanted to hear her Dragon say _those_ words out loud, she also knew this stubborn man needed to feel ready to say them before he could say them. The previous night’s confession, that was as much as she’d get for the time being. And it was enough. “I’ll go back. But only after we’ve had breakfast. And checked out a few of my… patients.”

His glower returned in full force at that, “Nieshka…”

“I really love it when you call me that…” She giggled, “But you won’t change my mind. I’m going to live with you, but I won’t change anything else. You know that.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line resigned, “Yes. I do.”

She beamed. Then cupped his face and brought his lips to hers. Agnieszka kissed him until she felt his worry thaw away, until Sarkan held on tighter to her, until her sheets were gone and her Dragon was breathing hard against her throat. She loved her cottage and she would miss it, yes. But the tower had been her home before. And she loved Sarkan very much. And she had missed him very dearly. Returning to the tower with him wouldn’t be a sacrifice at all.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ahhh, Sarkan still isn't ready to say those three little words it seems. Good thing these two understand each other so damn well.
> 
> fangirling/feedback/comments keep the monsters under the bed at bay <3


End file.
